4:1 Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort [you] by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received from us how ye ought to walk and to please God, [so] ye would abound more and more.
4:2 For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus.
4:3 For this is the will of God, [even] your sanctification, that ye should abstain from immorality:
4:4 That each one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;
4:5 Not in the lust of passion, even as the Gentiles who know not God:
4:6 That no [man] go beyond and defraud his brother in [any] matter: because the Lord [is] the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified.
4:7 For God hath not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness.
4:8 He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given to us his Holy Spirit.
4:9 But concerning brotherly love ye need not that I write to you: for ye yourselves are taught by God to love one another.
4:10 And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more;
4:11 And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;
4:12 That ye may walk honestly toward them that are outside [the church], and [that] ye may have need of nothing.
4:13 But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them who are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others who have no hope.
4:14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
4:15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive [and] remain to the coming of the Lord shall not precede them who are asleep.
4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
4:17 Then we who are alive [and] remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
4:18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.